This evening in Geneva, informal talks began between the United States and Russia, at a supper with U.S. delegation leader, Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State, and Sergey Ryabkov, Deputy Foreign Minister, and their teams, at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament. Tomorrow, the formal talks ensue, on the topic of security, between the U.S. and Russia. On Jan. 12, in Brussels, NATO and Russian officials will meet on security. On Jan. 13 in Vienna, the U.S., Russia and other member nations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will meet.On the eve of this historic week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke this morning on two Sunday TV interviews, unfortunately reiterating his litany of charges against Russia, his false history of Europe, and his crazed assertions about what he claims is in the interest of the United States, e.g., backing Eurasian nations against Russia—Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine and now Kazakhstan. In turn, Minister Ryabkov today told TASS, speaking of the Russian readiness to discuss the two draft security documents that they have provided for discussion and action: “Honestly speaking, I really doubt that our American colleagues are ready for such a talk, judging by the signals that we have been hearing in recent days…. But it would be naïve to expect progress, given the revised public presentation of the position that we see today, right before the start of contacts.” The Schiller Institute and collaborators in recent years, have done everything in their means to prevent this state of brinkmanship expressed by the Blinken position, which is, in fact, the classic, deadly British Great Gamesmanship in Eurasia. Now is not the fitting moment to prognosticate what exactly will happen in the discussions tomorrow and this week. But it is time to redouble our efforts to engage everyone possible to understand what is going on, and what they can do to stop the drive to Armageddon. An important initiative comes from the United States. Fifteen organizations—including religious, veteran, diplomacy and other groups—issued an open letter Jan. 8 to President Joe Biden, on what kind of negotiations should go on with Russia this week, to the joint interest of all nations and peoples. The letter was also sent to Blinken, and Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The letter is titled, “Further Strengthen Diplomatic Efforts and Avert War,” and is circulating through the channels of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. The bipartisan authors call on the U.S. to reject expanding NATO, and say: “It is in the interests of the United States, the region, and the world to address these and other root causes of tension with Russia as part of an ongoing strategic dialogue.” It states: “Continuing engagement is necessary to avert a military conflict that will harm the interests of the United States, harm innocent civilians in Ukraine, and risk spiraling into a potentially catastrophic war between the world’s two leading nuclear powers.” What is called for is statecraft in service of the common good, which in the face of war, is life itself. Look at Afghanistan, for the threat of mass death from famine, disease and weather. Some days ago, a fierce storm system hit south of the Hindu Kush, bringing snow and freezing temperatures in Kabul and neighboring provinces. To the east in Pakistan, over Jan. 6-7, the storm system dropped up to four feet of snow very fast, and trapped thousands of tourists in their cars in the scenic mountain area some 22 miles north of Islamabad, in the popular winter resort town of Murree. So far 22 are dead. Emergency crews are working hard, and this is rightly highly publicized. However, in Kabul, a city of 4.5 million, the frigid weather and lack of food are creating mass death circumstances, but the “news” remains almost completely blacked out. On Jan. 7, the Afghan government issued a direct world appeal by video. Acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Barada said, “In various places right now, people do not have food, accommodation, warm clothes or money….The world has to support Afghan people without any political bias and carry out their humanitarian obligations…. We call for the international community, NGOs and all the countries not to forget our poor people.” The situation underscores the role of the Schiller Institute and collaborators to make known the reality of the crises, and the reality that nations collaborating can solve them all. Plans are being made final for a Schiller Institute international conference on the Afghanistan emergency within the coming 10 days. Circulate everywhere the Schiller Institute Memorandum (Dec. 31, 2021) “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III?”

Now is the perfect time for the people living in the Trans-Atlantic nations to come to their senses, and throw out the ideological insanity embodied in neoliberal, and neo-conservative policies. The security dialogues with Russia this week provide an opportunity to move away from geopolitical confrontation with Russia; hyperinflation, supply-chain breakdowns, and unsustainable debt expose the fallacy of radical free market/free trade policies; and winter has shown why the Green New Deal must be dumped. So let's get to work, and organize a new paradigm, based on the body of work done by statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche.

by: Harley SchlangerJan. 8 -- Beginning on January 10, there will be three meetings which will include Russian and American representatives, in which the possibility exists that the tensions which have increased over Ukraine during the second half of 2021 will be addressed, resulting in a de-escalation. These meetings follow direct discussion in two video conferences in December between Presidents Putin and Biden, in which the most urgent issue addressed was the danger of war between Russia and Ukraine. U.S. intelligence claims to have evidence, based on Russian troop movements along the border, that they are preparing to invade Ukraine, as early as the end of January. President Putin dismissed this claim, raising instead his concerns over the possibility that Ukraine would be granted membership in NATO, a prospect he denounced as an unacceptable provocation, which would be the crossing of a "red line." While Biden insists that an offer of NATO membership is not imminent, the Russians have pointed to ongoing NATO-U.S. military exercises in Ukraine, and the provision of increasingly sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, as a threat to Russia's security. Putin has submitted drafts of two legally-binding treaties -- one for the U.S., one for NATO -- which would prevent further eastward expansion of NATO, would prohibit the delivery of new weapon systems to the Ukrainian military, and would pressure Ukraine to abide by the Minsk agreement which it signed to allow for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the Donbas. He has been raising the need for security guarantees repeatedly, as the anti-Russian rhetoric and NATO military deployments have escalated. For example, he said in a speech delivered to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on October 21, that Ukraine does not even have to be given formal NATO membership to pose a strategic threat to Russia. "Formal membership in NATO ultimately may not happen, but the military development of the territory is already underway. And this really poses a threat to the Russian Federation....Tomorrow, rockets could appear near Kharkov, what are we going to do about it? It's not us placing our missiles there, it's them shoving theirs under our nose." He continued, referring to the February 1990 promise made to Soviet President Gorbachev by U.S. officials, on behalf of NATO, that no eastward expansion of NATO would occur after the reunification of Germany: "Everyone from all sides said that after the unification, in no circumstance would NATO infrastructure move toward the east. Russia should have been able to at least rely on that. That's what they said, there were public statements. But in practice? They lied...and then they expanded it once, and then they expanded it again." Putin elaborated his view of the threat to Russian security in a December 21 report to the Defense Ministry Board: "What they (the United States) are doing on the territory of Ukraine now -- or trying to do and going to do -- this is not thousands of kilometers away from our national border. This is at the doorstep of our home. They must understand that we simply have nowhere to retreat further....Do they think we don't see these threats? Or do they think that we are so weak-willed to simply look blankly at the threats posed to Russia?" Putin stressed that placing weapons with nuclear devices in Ukraine puts them within 5 minutes of Moscow! He continued, "As I have already noted, in the event of the continuation of the obviously aggressive line of our Western colleagues, we will take adequate retaliatory military-technical measures, and react toughly to unfriendly steps. And, I want to emphasize, we have every right to do so, we have every right to take actions designed to ensure the security and sovereignty of Russia....We are extremely concerned about the deployment of elements of the U.S. global missile defense system near Russia." In case the urgency and intensity of Putin's message were missed by the Trans-Atlantic powers, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated the non-negotiable nature of Putin's demand for the adoption of these treaties. Russia is preparing, he said, "to firmly and effectively pursue the agenda of defending our interests and refusing to make concessions that would be unilateral...."